Stop the presses! We’ve been homeschooling for two decades and I’ve got the journalism background AND the education background, and I MISSED this?? What the heck happened to profoundly change my peers while I was home being my unshifting self?

Home schooling has grown most sharply for higher-income families. In 1999, 63.6% of home-schooling families earned less than $50,000. Now 60.0% earn more than $50,000.

Anybody keeping score of which party controls the first few innings of the confirmation debate should make note of how many times “baseball” gets repeated in the political chatter over the next 48 hours.

When a new President mentions baseball twice in the first few minutes of his first Supreme Court nominee event, it is not a coincidence. To make sure his first nominee makes it through a potentially ugly confirmation process, President Obama is wrapping the debate in one of the most popular symbols of American life: baseball.

Remember the last SCOTUS confirmation process, when now-Chief Justice John Roberts said being a judge was like being a baseball ump, applying the rules and calling each ball or strike fairly for every team and individual, without personal favoritism or animus?

But “umpires do not encounter cases where rules do not previously exist. They certainly do not get to determine what they mean or whether that meaning changes over time with societal developments and scientific advancements. . .”

It’s one of a handful of similar rooms in South Florida that stem in part from a 1970s Dutch philosophy known as Snoezelen (pronounced snooze-a-lun), which says surroundings can have a meaningful impact on behavior — like reducing stress and improving communication. . .

No kidding! This applies to everyone imo — isn’t this what environmental systems theory is all about? — and I’ve learned both from pleasure and pain, that it’s very important to me personally. Teresa Heinz Kerry knows how important surroundings are to the health of all women and children worldwide (not just in schools):

“Children live what they learn and learn what they live. We have to model the behaviors we want them to embrace, and that includes taking responsibility for our surroundings and caring for our bodies, earth around us, and all creation.

First of all, we can change the status quo if we do simple things together . . .”

The specific views in this case weren’t exactly inspired by Christianity, but I guess they considered themselves Catholic as well.

. . . how much did religion really have to do with it? The family submitted to chemotherapy and rejected it only after experiencing its side effects. Perhaps religion was something to hide behind. Perhaps it was something they were driven to in their search for an alternative.

But I suppose the question remains: Is Daniel, a thirteen year old with disabilities related to a difficult delivery, capable of making this decision himself?

But eighty-four years ago today, this was the story people would have been blogging [if times back then were more like times now, which they’re not]:

Nashville, Tenn., May 25 — John T. Scopes, young Dayton (Tenn.) high school teacher, tonight stands indicted for having taught the theory of evolution to students attending his science classes in violation of a law passed by the Tennessee Legislature and signed by the Governor on March 21, 1925.

. . . The session followed a charge by Judge John T. Raulston, who interpreted the law and included in his presentation for the reading of the first book of Genesis from the King James version of the Bible, in which the story creation is detailed.

The specific charge of the indictment is that on April 24, 1925, John T. Scopes, “did unlawfully and willfully teach in public schools of Rhea County, Tenn., which said schools are supported in part and in whole by the public school funds of the State, certain theory and theories that deny the story of Divine creation of man as taught in the Bible and did teach thereof that man descended from a lower order of animals.” The penalty prescribed in the law for such violation is a fine from $100 to $500.

Does it sound as if the religious conservative status quo of 1925 was way more committed to the rule of law back when they defined and controlled it?

Telling the jurors that if the statute had been violated, their duty was to find the indictment, Judge Raulston pointed out that it was not within their province to inquire into the policy or the wisdom of the legislation. Read the rest of this entry »

I swear. On his radio show this afternoon.
He likened our elegant, charming, authentically American (and black) president to the giant alien cockroach here to wipe humankind off the face of the earth, in the movie “Men in Black.”

FavD and I both heard his little um, riff, live, and stared at each other. We couldn’t believe he’d said it much less manage to explain in any way however far-fetched WHY he would say it.

Is it possible his deafness isn’t just aural now but increasingly mental — that he’s literally losing his faculties, in some creepy Michael Jackson-Elvis Presley public slide into senility if not madness?

There’s only one moment in Bristol’s People interview that actually sounds heartbreakingly real. She admits that she skipped her prom — ” I don’t have that kind of time. And the dress is, like, $400, and the shoes, hair, makeup, it’s way too expensive.”

Wow. Her mom enjoyed a free $150,000 wardrobe and $50,000 worth of makeup during the presidential campaign, and she wouldn’t babysit and fork over the money to get her daughter a dress for a once in a lifetime prom. As Bristol admitted, “It kind of sucked, to tell you the truth!” Read the rest of this entry »

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